Question reference: S5W-31440
- Asked by: Daniel Johnson, MSP for Edinburgh Southern, Scottish Labour
- Date lodged: 27 August 2020
-
Current status: Answered by David Stewart MSP (on behalf of the SPCB) on 10 September 2020
Question
To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body whether it will provide a technical report into the issues experienced with the new voting app; for what reason members have experienced delays with the app displaying votes, and whether these are due to (a) the technical design, (b) network and server infrastructure, (c) user error or (d) other technical issues.
Answer
The remote voting web app was developed during the short summer recess and first used the week commencing 11 August. It has been in place for 3 weeks of voting. It was used for votes at Decision Time and in the second week for multiple Stage 3 votes during proceedings on two different Bills. There were no votes in the third week.
The voting web app has been designed to be as flexible as possible so that it can be used on any phone, tablet, laptop or PC, on WiFi, ethernet or 3G / 4G, and for this reason the authentication is rigorous and the design of the application has been through comprehensive security controls including ratification of the high-level design by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC).
Issues with the application appeared to be more prevalent during the Stage 3 votes conducted recently, and analysis is ongoing to establish the root cause and the issue is being managed using major incident procedures.
Areas of investigation include:
· Detailed application analysis looking at server load, number of connections, backlog of queued calls to the application, and load testing.
· Infrastructure review including investigation chamber Wi-Fi coverage, performance and loading of access points, as well as testing of WiFi in the extended area of the chamber to establish if devices are maintaining connections to access points out with the chamber, which would impact performance.
The results of the investigations have already prompted some performance tuning in the voting app, specifically how it handles a large volume of connections and multiple votes in quick succession. These changes have been deployed and successfully tested in a simulated stage 3 vote with SPS staff.
Other issues are being addressed as they are identified and once we are confident that all issues are resolved, the major incident will be closed. As part of the major incident management processes a full technical report will be produced and considered by the SPCB. This report will be made available to members.